In my experience, it's shockingly difficult to stop consuming caffeine.

N of 1: I had a similar experience to the author. I was fine for a few weeks, slowly weening down my caffeine intake (I did get to zero eventually w/o headaches).

But I never felt quite "right." I always felt a little slow/sluggish, and I missed the routine. Perhaps work just isn't as interesting without caffeine?

Anyway, I'm back on it now, but I limit myself to one cup per day (and perhaps a second 1-2 days a week).

Similar experience. Went cold turkey once and had quite strong headaches for 2-3 days. No trouble for the remainder of the fortnight. But I only stopped because of vacation and the resort only had terrible coffee. (Headaches were marginally preferable.)

That said, my consumption levels have been sane for a few years now. I understand the negatives of over consumption but I don't fully understand the case for elimination?

Caffeine is a vasoconstrictor. The headaches are from your brain trying to adjust to the blood vessel change. Quitting even a mild habit can shave some points off your blood pressure.

If you drink soda or add cream/sugar to your coffee or tea, you may also find yourself losing some weight from stripping out the empty calories.

> Perhaps work just isn't as interesting without caffeine?

Since I quit caffeine (or stopped habitually drinking it every day)I noticed I am so much productive when I actually do drink a cup of coffee or strong tea. I'll be focused and fast. A little worrying to me to have an addiction so I can be more productive at work. It helps with my art hobby too.

Part of me wonders if I have undiagnosed adhd or something since the caffeine is so effective and making me focus and work better?

That's just caffeine "working", surely?

I've quit cold turkey a number of times (sometimes after being sick). It sharpens the pain to about a weeks worth of headaches and just being FLAT, but then I seem to be fine.

However, I find when I quit over longish periods (months), i start to lose my focus at work, and become quite scatterbrained and not really productive. I probably would have been some form of ADHD when I was a kid, and in the real world, it seems caffeine keeps me on track and productive (and probably most importantly, motivated) when sitting in a chair and staring at a monitor all day... without the coffee, I'm just scatterbrained and not getting work done.... If my day job were different, I don't think I'd need all the caffeine... I dont usually have sleep problems if I cut myself off by 2 or 3 pm... and I don't usually have more than 2 cups/day.

It probably doesn't help that I love the taste of coffee...

Sounds like you like the MAOIs in coffee more than the caffeine.

I’ve managed a few times, and gotten over the hump too, but the problem is I’ll “just have one” a few months later and it feels amazing and now I drink coffee again

The only thing easier than quitting is relapse.

I suspect that's part of the problem with the slow weaning process, compared to cold turkey. Similar to when people who quit smoking by cutting down

When I quit caffeine cold turkey, the side effects were immediate, but getting over the side effects only took days. Then feeling the benefit only took days after that.

So each hit was sudden and very noticeable, where as I suspect trying to slowly wean yourself off over months misses that sudden hit one day of "wow, I just feel so awake"

I felt mostly the same on nights where I got a decent night sleep. But I'd fall asleep at like 9-10pm on coach.

And on nights I got less than 8 hours, wow, I couldn't do it without caffeine.

Hey folks — author here! Hope this is useful. Had some great discussion on HN with my last article; always happy to debate!

Hey folks, author here. I'd love feedback – I'm also happy to answer any questions and/or debate!

What you're describing as a "so-called" leader is in fact what a good leader should do, in my opinion. It's a fine balance!

Thank you, and great point — another way I've heard it said by a friend/mentor is that "80% of PM is prioritization and communication". Where prioritization basically means "making good decisions on what gets prioritized".

Yup, I agree with that characterization. I also think that this is why a lot of people feel like PMs do nothing. Ironically it most frequently appears that PM isn't doing much when things are going really well (effortless execution) or really badly ("wtf are all of these meetings?").

I like the blog a lot, my biz partner and I have been writing on similar topics (link in profile if you're interested). Look forward to reading more of your stuff!

Thanks for reading! PG has a great article on "maker" vs. "manager" (I borrowed the framing from him and linked it in the article).

http://www.paulgraham.com/makersschedule.html

To your second point: Ultimately, the PM and the people they work with (engineering, design, PMM, research, etc.), are a cross-functional team. The PM shouldn't just provide a list of what to build; the PM should help lead them towards figuring out what to build, collaboratively, together.

While PGs essay talks about maker's and manager's schedule (emphasis), I find it being mis-framed here.

PG doesn't assign PM to manager's schedule. You can see engineers themselves running in buckets of maker's and manager's schedules.

Mindset of PMs being "managers", who must "lead" and unblock engineers & designers is deeply flawed and creates silos, turfs and dysfunction. Reality is that the notion of product is continuum between engineering and product management functions. One hardly need to manage other. One definitively need to partner with other.

Thanks! Principle #23, triple-check your links! ;)

Completely agree. The PM is there to help the team figure out what to build, and help them succeed in building it. They can do this in a number of ways: Being an expert on the product is "must have", but they also need to know the market, the needs of users/customers, the metrics, and more.

I agree. In my opinion, over-communication is to help maintain alignment between people/teams/functions. It can't replace real, valuable work and results. Ideally, if the PM is a good communicator, execution is a lot smoother for every team (because the PM is carrying the alignment/communication burden).

Over-communication never helps. Well, maybe it helps a PM feel like they're doing something, but to the detriment of everyone else.

I've always interpreted this message as "don't assume that everyone you're interacting with has all of the same context as you" and be proactive about sharing relevant context whenever you communicate. Not "send people the same message over and over or annoy people to make it seem like you're staying busy"

Yet other parts of the articles go into some depth about making sure that exact scenario doesn't happen!?

So either the advice around those parts doesn't truly work, or the PM just wants to be seen to be visible.

Maybe we're getting hung up on the definition of what 'over-communication' means. I don't disagree with you that there's a failure mode here, but as a mindset it's helpful when approaching your interactions with various functions in the business to keep in mind that communicating things that seem 'obvious' to you (because you think about them and talk about them a lot) might be really valuable to share with whoever you're talking to.

An example: I'm meeting with a sales rep who has a customer pushing really hard for a specific feature. It might be a good opportunity to walk them through what the overall strategy is over the next six months to help frame where their feedback might fit into it (or to explain why it doesn't and why we're unlikely to work on it). I might have shared this a month before at an all hands, but I can emphatically say from many past experiences that repeating it is helpful in these scenarios, even though it feels like I'm 'over communicating'

The other things listed out in the article feel like tactics that can help here, but for me 'don't assume everyone has the same information you have' is a really helpful mindset to hold.

That's an awesome way of putting it. I may borrow that! ;)

Please do!

I always viewed over-communication as akin to "calling your shots." Say what it is that you or others are going to do, so that people can call out if they expect issues or if they see gaps. It isn't necessarily about holding a ton of meetings or getting on some soapbox in the Black Turtleneck (tm) that all PMs are assigned on their first day. It's usually in the form of quick emails/slack messages/good meeting notes.

(I think that the article sums that concept up well)

One of the greats! It's amazing how well "Good PM/Bad PM" has aged. =)

Wait, what aged poorly about it? I don't know if you meant that but the disclaimer at the top says it did:

>>Warning: This document was written 15 years ago and is probably not relevant for today’s product managers. I present it here merely as an example of a useful training document.

I'm saying it's aged well! Despite the author's caveat, I think it's still accurate in a lot of ways.

Thanks for confirming. I skimmed it and I couldn't tell what he meant was no longer relevant; nothing seemed obsolete (in any obvious way to a non-PM like me). To his credit, it seems like he wrote the principles in a very general, abstract manner that didn't become dated with changing technology.